NEW YORK: The Kellogg Co., the food manufacturer, is tapping more “agile” ways to determine return on investment (ROI) in order to help it adapt marketing strategies at greater speed.

Jeff Doud, Director/Marketplace Analytics at Kellogg, discussed this topic during a session at the 2017 Attribution Accelerator, an event convened by GreenBook and Sequent Partners.

And he suggested the pursuit of “agile ROI” – a multi-year effort that covers areas including results tracking, business insights and integration with business unit processes – is a complex task based on a simple premise.

“The logic is simple: You find out what’s working [and] what’s not working; you reallocate your information, or you reallocate your investment, to what’s working more quickly; and you build at a higher pace,” he said. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: The Kellogg Co.’s journey to “agile ROI”.)

“Concepts are built off compound growth. If you invest more quickly, you get a higher base [and] higher growth. You invest again more quickly, [and] you get higher base [and] higher growth.”

Marginal gains, Doud asserted, may not sound as impressive as a large growth figure announced at the end of a 12-month period. But frequent, small lifts can add up to better long-term performance.

“A 3% quarterly improvement will yield 41% more growth after five years than a 10% annual once-a-year [measurement],” Doud said. “It’s all about compound growth and quickness.”

The company’s approach to proving out return on investment draws on marketing-mix analysis, “micro-media studies” fuelled by sources like Nielsen Catalina Solutions, and a slate of other inputs as required.

“We’ll bring in all types of data to make the best fact-based decisions that we can make,” Doud told the Analytics Accelerator delegates.

And while the results have been promising, he explained that further room for progress remains. “We’ve seen some growth; we have some decent progress – so far so good,” he said.

“We know there are opportunities that we have and we have identified those opportunities around: What’s the optimal content to have? What’s the right format, or the optimal format, to have for each of the different channels that we’re in?”

Sourced from WARC